


blueshift

by consumptive_sphinx



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Family Drama, Gen, Self Actualization, caste systems, not really either of those though, sorta like a modern au and sorta like an amenta au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 04:06:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14324220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consumptive_sphinx/pseuds/consumptive_sphinx
Summary: Fin wanted a purple child. Anaro is not unaware of this, he couldn't ever be — Anaro goes to the very best blue schools Fin can afford, but Fin’s smile is always a little bit pained when Anaro tells him about his day there.





	blueshift

**Author's Note:**

> castes are as follows:  
> Purple - people who are in a position of responsibility over others (politicians, therapists, judges, teachers)  
> Red - people whose job involves being in the public eye (singers, actors, athletes, artists, models)  
> Gold - people who save the day (firefighters, the military, the police, EMTs, paramedics, doctors)  
> Green - people who notice things and write them down (scientists, stenographers, data analysts, journalists, mathematicians)  
> Blue - people who create things (construction workers, bakers, programmers, architects, tailors)  
> Pink - people who interact with people (diplomats, nurses, clergy, sex workers, customer service)

Fin Lacena marries Miro Theri, a Councilor to a embroiderer. Indigo marriages, like all intercaste marriages, are getting more and more common, but it's still noticeably unusual — half the papers in the country run a piece on the marriage and the implications of it with regards to the rise of populism.

Miro gets pregnant after four months of marriage. The pregnancy is unplanned but not unwelcome, but in her third trimester she gets very sick, sick enough that nobody's sure whether she'll live. Fin doesn't leave her hospital bed for a week.

Anaro Theri is born a month premature, weighing barely four pounds and just old enough that he doesn't need a machine to help him breathe. Miro starts to heal, but slowly; Anaro’s birth was exhausting.

Fin adores his wife, adores his son. Anaro stays healthy. Miro… doesn't.

Miro Theri dies when her son is three months old.

And when Anaro’s hair starts to show, it's bright, sapphire blue.

  


Fin wanted a purple child. Anaro is not unaware of this, he couldn't ever be — Anaro goes to the very best blue schools Fin can afford, but Fin’s smile is always a little bit pained when Anaro tells him about his day there.

Anaro could have been purple like Fin wanted but instead he is _blue blue blue,_ and in school he learns enough math to fall in love with it and enough metalworking to fall in love with it and just barely enough languages to know he needs to know more of them. Fin likes that he likes learning, but he's more than a little bit disappointed that Anaro learns for the joy of knowing and not because the knowledge will be useful to him.

(Anaro is not socially oblivious, least of all to his father. Not caring what people think of him isn't the same as not knowing.)

He starts angling towards being an engineer at ten, loads up on math and physical science and drops his literature courses and foreign languages (he can learn them himself faster than the teacher can teach them to him, now.) He is _blue blue blue_ and he learns circuitry and he learns material science and architecture and he learns three programming languages and he never goes to a single one of Fin’s political fundraisers.

When Anaro is eleven, Fin remarries. Intis is a senator’s daughter and purple like Fin and a political figure through and through and Anaro hates her, hates her because she is what Fin wanted from Miro and because she is only here because Anaro isn't good enough and because every single one of her smiles to Anaro are _fake fake fake._

Intis gets pregnant. She doesn't get sick. Nolvo Lacena is born exactly on time, ten pounds and healthy, with a tiny bit of soft violet fuzz on his head.

Fin and Intis and their purple baby are an adoring family and Anaro stands awkwardly to the side in all of their photos and tries not to look as desperately envious of that love as he feels. He buries himself in languages and eats upstairs and ignores when Intis tries to engage with him and plays with the baby only when nobody is around to see.

Nolvo grows up sent to the best purple schools, grows up at Fin’s political events, grows up with friends who will become senators and Counselors and teachers. Anaro doesn't hate him, doesn't hate that his hair is royal purple or that he still has both his parents or that Fin adores him _so much —_

Okay. Maybe Anaro hates him a little.

  


Anaro gets into the best blue university in the country at the age of fifteen with a merit based full ride scholarship. He doesn't even tell Fin until he's half an hour away by train — just buys a ticket, texts his school friends, and goes.

He calls himself Anaro Theri and he is _blue blue blue_ and the entire point of him is to build and create and learn and nobody here knows him as Fin Lacena’s son and Anaro has never been happier. He keeps up materials science and programming, builds robots and writes the programs for them in his dorm by the light of his computer monitor in the middle of the night, learns how to triple distill coffee and never looks back.

Just before his seventeenth birthday, he meets Nerani Maneta, a red artist who's looking for someone to help her with a kinetic sculpture project. Anaro could adore her, he knows, she's two years older than he is and her eyes are bright gold and she's _brilliant_ and they click together so well —

If this is what Fin felt for Miro then it's a wonder he managed to keep going after Anaro was born, Anaro thinks absently, after Nerani stands up from the coffee shop table and Anaro realizes he's been staring at where her hands had rested on the table for the last two minutes, and then, _Of course I'm going to ask her to marry me._

  


When he turns twenty, he does. Fin is invited; Intis is not; Nolvo and his younger brother Ara are not invited but are not specifically disinvited.

Of the three of them, only Ara shows up. Fin’s at a Council meeting, he says, it's halfway across the country, he couldn't make it. Anaro very specifically doesn't let it hurt. Politicians are busy. Ara’s very sweet. It’s fine.

  


Nerani gets pregnant after four years of marriage. Anaro curls up next to her in bed and tells himself firmly that if she seems hotter than usual — if her breathing is less even — if she throws up sometimes in the mornings and if there are foods she suddenly can’t eat — it’s just the pregnancy. That happens. She isn’t going to — she’s going to be alright. Their child (their son, they find out) will have two parents and both of them will adore him.

Ahito Theri is born two days late and his hair is just barely visible but it’s red like cherries, red like Nerani’s. “If he’s half as brilliant as you,” he says to her while he’s holding Ahito, and she laughs and leans against him and doesn’t kiss him just yet. (Giving birth is always exhausting. She’ll be alright.)

  


Ahito grows up red, grows up learning every musical instrument they could find for him, grows up speaking five languages and helping his father in the workshop and helping his mother in the studio. He grows up with classmates who will be artists and singers and dancers and sports players, makes as many out of caste friends as he can.

Their second child comes out red; they name him Makali. Makali is a singer; that's obvious before he reaches his third birthday. Ahito, four years older, has no idea what he's going to do with his life. He's decent at three instruments but talented at none; he'll spend time in Nerani’s studio but he spends it helping her. Teleko, their third, is blue, and too young to show any talents in particular just yet but he doesn't _seem_ unhappy.

Ara marries out of caste, a gold who used to be part of the coast guard. Nolvo marries a purple woman and has purple children; Anaro only learns about this when Ahito befriends his oldest, a thoroughly boring boy named Ekano, but that’s when he looks at Ahito’s friends and notices just how many of them are purples.

Ahito cuts his hair short in the bathroom with Teleko's safety scissors and shoves it under hats, looks enviously at hair chalk in costume stores. Anaro wishes he didn’t notice.

  
  


“Do you ever wish I was purple?”

It's after two in the morning but Anaro knows that Nerani is awake; her breathing is so even she can only be controlling it consciously.

“Why would I wish that?” she says. She's tired. Anaro is pretty sure he didn't wake her up but he stopped her from getting to sleep — he runs a hand over her shoulder apologetically.

“Ahito’s miserable,” he says. “All his friends are purple, you've seen how he looks at costume dye — Makali’s been helping him dye it burgundy but he's _so miserable,_ and if I'd been —”

“If you'd been purple Ahito would still be red because I'd still be red,” Nerani says. “You already decided you don't care what Fin thinks, sweetheart. Go to sleep.”

Nerani wraps an arm over him and Anaro relaxes under the weight of her. Tries to settle into the bed, tries to close his eyes and fall asleep.

Doesn't quite manage.


End file.
